The allure of Marxism that keeps people chasing it is that it provides a convenient way to present a villain as the cause of people's problems. As soon as you can convert people to being the "others" you have a perfect scapegoat that is instantly dehumanized. In the case of Marxism, the villain is "the rich." It is perfectly nebulous. It just means anyone who has more than you is the cause of the problem. The other insidious allure is that it takes away all personal responsibility for everything that is wrong. Your condition does not arise from a fault in you. You are just the victim of the evil of the "others".
The reason that it doesn't really work is that you very quickly run out of the obvious rich and everyone that has less that you sees you as the next target. Society takes the form of ouroboros and it consumes itself. More succinctly, it is great to target the rich until you run out of people that are richer and YOU become the rich that is targeted.
There is nothing wrong with socialism, *per se*. That is just an accounting system. It is just people working together for the common good rather than profit. We have many systems that are socialist that are great. Credit unions, public libraries, and employee owned companies are perfect examples. They go against the tenets of Marxism because Marx saw wealth as a zero sum game and labor as a commodity that was all of equal value. New wealth can be created and not all labor has the same value.
The one flaw with socialism is that it doesn't scale well. As soon as you combine the resources of those who contribute, it creates an over sized consolidation of wealth that needs to be managed and without strict safeguards, becomes too tempting. Even discounting those who will pilfer from it for personal gain, it is too tempting to try to infinitely expand things to encompass doing even "more good." Look what happened to Social Security. It was originally designed as obligating people to set aside a portion of money that they worked for to take care of them when they got old. They quickly decided to expand that to help people who had never contributed and turned it into a ponzi scheme.
The allure of Marxism that keeps people chasing it is that it provides a convenient way to present a villain as the cause of people's problems. As soon as you can convert people to being the "others" you have a perfect scapegoat that is instantly dehumanized. In the case of Marxism, the villain is "the rich." It is perfectly nebulous. It just means anyone who has more than you is the cause of the problem. The other insidious allure is that it takes away all personal responsibility for everything that is wrong. Your condition does not arise from a fault in you. You are just the victim of the evil of the "others".
The reason that it doesn't really work is that you very quickly run out of the obvious rich and everyone that has less that you sees you as the next target. Society takes the form of ouroboros and it consumes itself. More succinctly, it is great to target the rich until you run out of people that are richer and YOU become the rich that is targeted.
There is nothing wrong with socialism, *per se*. That is just an accounting system. It is just people working together for the common good rather than profit. We have many systems that are socialist that are great. Credit unions, public libraries, and employee owned companies are perfect examples. They go against the tenets of Marxism because Marx saw wealth as a zero sum game and labor as a commodity that was all of equal value. New wealth can be created and not all labor has the same value.
The one flaw with socialism is that it doesn't scale well. As soon as you combine the resources of those who contribute, it creates an over sized consolidation of wealth that needs to be managed and without strict safeguards, becomes too tempting. Even discounting those who will pilfer from it for personal gain, it is too tempting to try to infinitely expand things to encompass doing even "more good." Look what happened to Social Security. It was originally designed as obligating people to set aside a portion of money that they worked for to take care of them when they got old. They quickly decided to expand that to help people who had never contributed and turned it into a ponzi scheme.
Amazingly well said David!
You are just the victim of the evil of the "others" perfectly sums up the world we're living in now.